Panasonic

I don’t usually write reviews of those latest travel photo gear such as camera or lens when they are just released. I only write something on my experience on using some of those equipment that I own for some period of time. So, you can only read reviews on stuffs like the Panasonic Fz28, Nikon D60, Nikkor 35mm f1.8, Lowepro Cirrus TLZ15 and others that I own and that’s all. There is no exception for this round. I own it, I used it for 90% of my time or nearly 4100 photos taken in Europe recently, and I love it. It is the Tamron AP10-24mm f3.5-4.5 Di II Ultra Wide Angle (UWA) lens with Nikon mounting. It was launched sometimes in 2008 and still the latest UWA lens for Tamron.

Tamron SP 10-24mm2

This is how it looks standing alone with the Tamron cover on in front and the mounting cap at the back. Filter size for this lens is pro-size 77mm which is not compatible with my Nikkor’s 52mm. I bought the Hoya HD UV filter to fit in for protection. Quite an expensive protective UV filter at RM250.00 (USD75) per piece though it is claimed to be the best filter around with HD clarity to the image. :)

I’m not an expert technically so I can comment much on its technical specification. Basically,

  1. Zoom range is from 10mm-24mm in small APS-C sensor / DX format (or 15mm-36mm at 35mm Full frame equivalent).
  2. Widest aperture range is from f3.5 to f4.5 along the zoom range. Not the fastest UWA lens around.
  3. It is much bigger than my Nikkor 18-55mm zoom and 55-200mm zoom, measuring 83mm diameter and 94mm overall length.
  4. It has an internal focusing system which means when it focus, the external barrel would rotate. This is good when you fitted a graduated filter or polariser and your fingers would block its way when focusing.
  5. Same with Nikkor, it has a switch though to manually overwrite its autofocusing (same with the Nikkor’s MA switch).
  6. It weighs around 400g which is hefty in the travel photographer’s hand.
  7. Good thing is it has built-in focusing motor (though a bit slow) so it could be used with budget entry level camera such as my Nikon D60 or D3000.
  8. Since it was designed for APS-C format DSLR, the lens is not suitable for Full frame format DSLR which will have serious vignetting effect at all corners.
  9. Selling Price at the moment is RM1,950.00 or USD590.00 which is the cheapest Ultra Wide Angle lens in the market now.

E&Y Building

How it performs in reality? Apart from Fish Eye, it is the widest lens available in the market now at 10mm (Though Sigma is coming out with 8mm very soon). I used it most of the time for 90% of all my 4500 shots on my Europe travel recently. After attaching it to my D60, the combo can still fit nicely into my tiny Lowepro waist bag which is good news. I can carry it easily along my travel. Operation side, Tamron SP10-24mm UWA lens is very easy to handle. Grip is firm with it rubber ring for both zooming and manual focusing rings. Resting it onto your palm and zoom it is easy. Only once a while you can mistakenly rotate the focusing ring which is further in front of the zooming ring. However, both rings are fairly tight but still smooth to be rotated. I found this better as it is more resistant to accidentally rotate and mess up the focusing which happened many times with my Nikkor 35mm which also features the internal focusing system with manual focus overwriting.

St.Paul Cathedral at 24mm

The images captured with this Tamron SP10-24mm are both bright and sharp. Personally I couldn’t differentiate the sharpness between it and my fixed 35mm f1.8 lens. Color rendering is also good to my expectation. Its zoom range is the widest in its class from 10mm to 24mm focal length in DX format or 15mm to 36mm in 35mm equivalent. If you are wondering how much the lens within its available zoom range can cover, look at both the above and below photo. The above photo was taken with the lens furthest focal length of 24mm while the photo below was shot with its widest 10mm wide angle.

St.Paul Cathedral at 12mm

Amazing right? I can either zoom out to capture the whole St. Paul Cathedral or zoom in to to focus on people. It was why I used it most of the time in Europe, except only when I wished to capture portrait or close-up’s.

How about its distortion control? Chromatic Aberration (CA) is very well controlled with it 12 element 9 group of high precision and low dispersion glass. Only very minimum CA was spotted in mostly the high contrast sections of the image. Moreover, barrel distortion is surprisingly low with this ultra wide angle lens especially when you are shooting tall buildings. Vignetting doesn’t exist in all my 4100 photos. Overall, Tamron SP10-24mm UWA lens is very good in handling image distortion.

St. Paul Cathedral London

All in all, Tamron SP 10-24mm f3.5-4.5 Di-II is a very good Ultra Wide Angle lens which is best to use for shooting landscape and architecture with lots of straight lines, like the perfect example shown in the above photos.

What about the downside? Tamron SP10-24mm is not good for fast moving objects. Its built-in focusing motor is very slow if compared to other competitors like Sigma. On top of that, f3.5-4.5 maximum aperture is not the fastest around. Other competitors produce faster and fixed aperture UWA lens, though is more expensive.

The last complaint I have with this lens is its ultra wide coverage which could not be coped with most DSLRs’ built-in flash! If you are shooting night scene with this lens and built-in flash on, or if you are shooting close-up objects with flash on, the centre bottom part of your image will appear dark with shadow of the lens itself as the built-in flash light is partly blocked by the large lens! So if you are keen to use UWA lens for night shooting, remember to bring your external flash along which is taller.

Ultra Wide Angle lens is the essential piece of travel photo gear for Europe travel and Tamron SP 10-24mm f3.5-4.5 Di-II is doing a very good job as an Ultra Wide Angle lens. – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel photo blog

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This is a post what many travelers are missing out on! No introduction I think is needed for this place. Those who have been to Phuket and Patong Beach before must have also visited this travelers’ hot spot. For other travelers who are planning to visit Phuket, you must have also heard about these lively night scenes. Where am I referring to here? It has the most happening nightlife in Phuket. It sleeps at day and wake up at night. It’s also the heaven to those ‘desperate’ man. Bingo! It’s Bangla Street of Patong, Phuket. How much do I love Bangla Street?

Bangla stree2

We stayed in Safari Beach Hotel which is just around the corner from Bangla Street (highly recommended hotel if you’re staying in Patong). So on the night itself after we arrived at Patong Beach, tried some local foods, did some shopping in Jungceylon, dived into the sea of Andaman in the evening, shot some exciting sun-setting, and took a bath in the hotel, we headed back out again at night to take our first seafood dinner in Patong and off course, to do some pub crawling at Bangla Street!

Bangla stree6

Welcome to Patong!

Bangla stree3

The real crowds at Bangla Street drew in very late. When we passed by it at around 8pm, there were still not many people seen on the street.

Bangla stree4

But pubs and restaurants already started their business…

Bangla stree5

However, It was the best chance for me to take some photographs over those pubs freely without any obstructions from the crowd.

Bangla stree7

FBI in Phuket? It’s actually Finest Bar In Thailand night club. :)

Bangla stree8

We chose this 99 Restaurant along Rat-U-Thit Road at the end of Bangla Road because of this huge signboard of 99! We did not expect any surprises from here as what you can see from their signboard, they are mainly for tourists!

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Bangla stree10

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We picked and ordered some simple seafood without the lobster. The food tastes fine but not as good as our lunch at Jungceylon. The price is reasonable. It cost us RM200 for 6 of us.

Bangla stree13

Too full for beers? Nevermind, we took a walk along Rat-U-Thit Road. Rat-U-Thit is the main road in Patong and you can find various souvenir shops and stalls along both sides of the road.

Bangla stree15

Jean loves these very much…

Bangla stree20

These lanterns are beautiful… but not the Chinese wording. I know Chinese language but I don’t understand what they are writing. They are just single words being copied and pasted. :(

Bangla stree21

This is interesting…. tools and weapons for self protection. Do we need any in Phuket?

Bangla stree14

We were a bit thirsty and we caught this Gelato shop. We tried a scoop. Not bad. But I’m looking forward to try the original in Rome this May! :)

Bangla stree16

Along the Beach Road, there are many up market seafood restaurants and bars also.

Bangla stree17

What a contrast. A pinoy band singing in front of the ‘Four Faces Buddha‘ statue.

Bangla stree22

Alright! It’s time to go back to Bangla Street. First look at this Bangla Area Map. It’s the directories of all bars along the road. There are easily more than 100 drinking holes there. Read also the warning on top right corner: Have Fun, Be Safe, Look After Your Bag. Let’s go bar hopping!! :)

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Crowds started to come in from all over Phuket…

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Drinkers started to fill the space of all bars…

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The highlight of the street! Lady boys in action!

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Look at the crowds. People were drawn into the frontage of this lady boy bar.

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Not only lady boys performance, they are also pole dancing show on 1st floor.

Bangla stree28

The best spot to see these show is not inside it (though we did drink inside to get them up close… and up skirt) but the bars opposite the road with road side seating.

Bangla stree29

Lay boys podium dancing! Oh my god! Do you have the same body figures as them, ladies? It’s actually against Buddhism restrictions to disclose their bodies in public. If you are coming to Phuket for Buddhism travel, stay away from Bangla Street at all times.

Bangla stree30

Instead of mugs on coasters in Europe, bars in Patong serve bottled beers in beer jacket with attractive graphics.

Bangla stree31

The red light district of Patong and Phuket. It was stimulating indeed. Most of them are on offer to be tourists’ ‘escorts’.

Apart from drinking, there are also dancing clubs and snooker centers around the area. We had a really good time on the first night in Patong. Beers are cheap at around THB50. Cigarettes are being sold at dedicated stalls only for THB90 per packet of 20′s. There were so many bar girls for patrons to grab away (that’s what Bangla Street is infamous for) but just try to behave yourself. Drugs are illegal in Thailand though many patrons having fun here are taking soft drugs such as Cannabis and Yah Bah. I’m not one of them. Alchohol had made me high enough to do anything crazy… :)Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel photo blog

You can view all photos in full resolution in my Flickr page or slideshow below. Happy viewing!

All photos was taken with Nikon D60 with Nikkor 35mm f1.8 lens.

p/s: If you think this travel photo blog has something you are looking for and is worth for your reading, please support me by one of these ways: Subscribe to Travel Feeder’s feeds for free upcoming stories via RSS or email; Search and purchase my favourite photos from istockphoto; Get your camera stuffs through my link to Amazon where you won’t lose anything and I could earn some commission, or, buy me a cup of coffee. :) Thank you. – Travel Feeder.

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cecil on April 3rd, 2010

The fascinating original design of Kellie’s Castle with an indoor tennis court on the 2nd floor, a first-in-Malaya elevator connecting the top floor to the ground, a tunnel underground connecting the castle with a Hindu temple nearby and the Hinduism influence with building materials imported directly from India, had made this castle so attractive and became a famous travel destination in Batu Gajah, 20 minutes away from Ipoh, northern Malaysia.

Kellies Castle

Even though it was not completed due to some financial and health issues of the owner, a Scottish planter, Mr. William Kellie Smith, the spirit and the outlook  was great enough to have become the backdrop setting for the famous movie, “Anna and the King” starred by Chow Yun Fatt and Jodie Foster in 1999. For those of you who are visiting the well known island resort of Pangkor Island, on your way to Lumut, you will see this castle around Batu Gajah on your left. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog

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cecil on February 26th, 2010

If you are visiting Malaysia, one of the top places to go in Malaysia should include the Langkawi Island in northern Peninsular Malaysia. What can you see in Langkawi? Other than beaches or Perdana Gelleria, the next hot spot to go must be this crocodile farm. In fact there are not much things you can [...]

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cecil on February 4th, 2010

Good news! Travel photo wallpaper calendar for April 2010 is now available here to download! If you still haven’t got the February and March 2010 wallpaper calendar, Download it first) As usual, 2 sizes are available here: 1920 x 1080 px for Full HD wide screen LCD and 1280 x 1024 px for conventional computer [...]

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It’s time now to conclude the whole stories of my packaged travel to Shanghai and other 4 cities in South Yangtze region of China. We spent 8 days in the tour to cover many tourist attractions in Shanghai, Hangzhou, SuZhou, Nanjing, Wuxi and also the water village, Wuzhen. For the first 4 days, we explored [...]

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Finally, I’m going to wrap up the story of my South Yangtze China in this post. We woke up in the morning and it was already our 8th and final day in China. After having our breakfast in our hotel, KuaiJie by Holiday Inn, we checked out the hotel and headed to our final destination [...]

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The title may sound ridiculous. Yes. In terms of overall image quality, my Nikon D60 still has the edge. However, in certain aspect and under certain circumstances, my 15 month old Panasonic Lumix FZ28 is no doubt better than my DSLR, or even most of the DSLR in the market. “Are you sure?” I’ve been [...]

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Nanjing Road was our last tourist spot in Shanghai also the last evening of our 8-days packaged travel to South Yangtze China. To refresh your memory (I know I have dragged the stories of the tour a bit too long… ), this was part of the night excursion add-on package we paid 200 bucks extra [...]

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For those fans of the Hong Kong celebrity food critic, Mr. Choi Lan (that’s me!), this must be a big surprise: “Choi Lan is here in Kuala Lumpur!” And I managed to catch him live in action at the Kuala Lumpur‘s latest food centre, the Lot 10 Hutong (十号胡同). As one of the top 3 best travel [...]

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